


past the breakers

by sharkfish



Series: spinning [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alpha Dean, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Armageddon, Asexual Castiel (Supernatural), Asexual Character, M/M, Mating Bites, Minor Character Death, Omega Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 13:11:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13435413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkfish/pseuds/sharkfish
Summary: There are people hell-bent on engaging all their various vices before the lights go out for good, but Dean is just grateful for every evening he gets to hold or be held by Cas on the couch of the too-small apartment they share now. He’s conscious every time they part that this could be the lastsee you later.





	past the breakers

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to [robotsnchicks](http://robotsnchicks.tumblr.com) for the beta.
> 
> lately i've been wondering about what's going on in the spinning verse. unfortunately no one else seemed interested in writing a fic about it for me, so i had to go visit them again myself.

 

Dean is not surprised to learn Cas is asexual. It was never something they talked about before New Year’s, but Cas never dates, and Dean was pretty sure he hadn’t hooked up with any one at any point during their lengthy friendship.

Cas likes kissing, but he clearly never feels ferocious and red with it like Dean does. Cas’s eyes only fade gray sometimes, but Dean’s are burning from the moment he feels Cas’s tongue until he’s so overwhelmed that he has to break it off, sometimes so keyed up he has to jerk off right then. Cas doesn’t mind that, though he is completely unaffected by it.

Cas lets Dean stay in the room during his heats because the alpha scent soothes him, but he doesn’t like Dean to touch except for Cas snuggling up to Dean’s chest in breaks between rounds of need.

What does make Cas’s eyes flash gray immediately is when Dean says “I love you,” and the room fills up with the scent of _happy-omega_. _Loved-omega._ _Adored-omega. Mate._

There are people hell-bent on engaging all their various vices before the lights go out for good, but Dean is just grateful for every evening he gets to hold or be held by Cas on the couch of the too-small apartment they share now. He’s conscious every time they part that this could be the last _see you later._

 

It didn’t start with the attempt to repeal the Omega Rights Act of 1928, but it wasn’t long after the riots started that it was no longer relevant. By the time the first bombs fell — two dictators playing a war of collateral damage — no one was voting in the foreseeable future anyway.

 

“We should leave,” Cas says. “Balthazar has a place on the coast.”

“You don’t like Balthazar.”

“I like him better than dying.”

“We have jobs.”

“We won’t if we’re dead. I think it’ll be safer outside of major population centers.”

Ruby and Ash are already dead, and the news says it’s getting worse.

“If I lost you,” Cas starts, but looks away and doesn’t finish.

“Ok,” Dean says. “Call him.”

Zar is cranky about it, but he tells them to head down. He warns them that Anna is already there. Cas hasn’t spoken to Anna since their dad died nearly a decade ago.

They get a call from Rowena. Meg was in the Frost Tower when it was hit. Downtown is disappearing under rubble and when Dean and Cas head south, there’s detour after detour around the destruction.

Dean expects bumper-to-bumper all the way to Port Aransas, but it clears up enough to cruise the Impala at 80, windows down, singing Bad Company to Cas. A few times Cas smiles at him like they’re on a regular road trip, not fleeing a war, like he’s forgotten. Dean loves him most in those moments.

Sam was on a business trip to San Francisco when the planes were grounded, but he made it to a safehouse further north. He checks in when he can.

 

Balthazar is a douchebag just like he was the last time Dean met him, but he’s welcomed them into his (second) home, so Dean forces himself to play nice. He feels better that Cas is clearly struggling to be polite, too. Cas and Anna have nothing to say to each other, though she does take an inexplicable shining to Dean immediately.

“Of course,” Cas grumbles in bed the first night. “She’s always been a floozy for a gorgeous man.”

Dean laughs. “You think I’m gorgeous, baby?”

“Obviously you are,” Cas says, rolling his eyes.

Dean pulls him close, and Cas tucks his head under Dean’s chin. Cas likes touching skin-to-skin at night, something in the primal part of his brain needing to mix scents with his mate. Dean needs it, too, and he preens when Cas kisses the mouth-shaped scar on Dean’s neck.

 

Garth vowed to work the force to the very end, so the phone call from Bess doesn’t surprise them.

 

Dean and Cas take long walks on the beach. They stop watching the news. They play a lot of card games, mostly just the two of them but sometimes all four of the beach house residents. They buy a lot of produce while they still can, stock up on everything else. Gas is already drying up.

Anna is trying to keep in touch with the rest of the Novaks. Luke is in France and doesn’t seem worried. Michael got shipped overseas. Hannah goes quiet after the latest attack on New York. Dean wonders if Cas regrets all the years of silence.

Rowena checks in from Llano, says she thinks she’ll be ok. Benny went back to Jennings even before Dean and Cas left home. There’s no job for Cas to go back to, what was left of the company gone up in smoke.

It’s a couple weeks into their exile when Charlie calls. “Dorothy and I left last night. But — check on your people.” Her voice only cracks a little when she says, “The city’s gone.”

Ellen and Jo both said they’d be captains going down with their beloved Roadhouse, but Dean dials their numbers with shaking hands anyway. No one answers. The last thing Dean will ever hear Jo say is, _I don’t know why you think I listen to my voicemails. Text me._

Cell service is spotty. Cas can’t get through to Gabe, but the next time they have any bars, there’s a message from Gabe saying he and Kali made it out by the skin of their teeth.

Dean is desperately in love with Cas and angry at himself for not saying anything sooner. There could’ve been more time like this, the two of them kissing on the back deck while the waves roll in and out.

Cas tells Dean he kept quiet because he didn’t think Dean would want someone like him. “I know I’m not broken,” Cas says. “But we’re different. I thought you needed things I couldn’t give you.”

“I’ve always wanted you more than anything else.”

Bela and Dean haven’t been close for a long time, but Dean receives what must be a mass text saying she made it out, wishing them all luck.

And then everything goes dark.

 

When Cas goes into heat, he pushes Dean down on the bed and straddles his thighs. “We should have sex,” he says.

Dean is bewildered. “No we shouldn’t. You hate sex.”

“If this is the end,” Cas says, “I want to give this to you.”

“No,” Dean says, guiding Cas off of him. “I’m not going out ignoring who you are. Who _we_ are. I’ll help you with a toy if you want me to, but nothing else.”

Cas looks at him a long time. His cheeks are flushed and Dean can smell where he’s starting to get wet. “I’m proud to be your mate, Dean Winchester,” Cas says.

“I’m always proud to be yours.”

Cas doesn’t want Dean to help, but he hums happily when Dean strokes damp hair off his forehead and kisses him after it’s over.

 

Dean smokes Marlboro Reds again, just like his father did, and on sunset smoke breaks sometimes he sees dolphins out in the distance.

A lot of the island is still destroyed from the hurricane, but recovery efforts stopped months and months ago.

 

The electrical grid stays up far longer than anyone expected, and then the generator lets them limp through awhile, and then they’re building bonfires on the beach and trying to conserve candles. They commandeer a little fishing boat and Cas is surprisingly good with a pole or net, though Dean is the one who always ends up cleaning and gutting.

Flocks of brown pelicans fly by all day, and Dean thinks a lot about how life moves on, the planet keeps spinning, regardless of human tragedy.

Inias, a friend of Anna’s, makes it down after mostly walking for hundreds of miles. All his possessions were stolen from him more than once. Dean breaks into an abandoned gun store and teaches them all how to shoot.

The last newscast they saw, the only remaining anchor was saying progress was being made towards a truce, but Dean isn’t even sure who else would be left to watch the broadcast.

 

The next time they have any contact with anyone outside the five of them, it’s a woman who stops her _horse_ at the end of the driveway with her hands up.

“I come in peace,” she hollers. “I’m armed, but I’m just here with news.”

Dean walks to her first because he’s still the only one of them who’s any good with a firearm.

“I’m dismounting,” the woman says.

Dean’s hand tightens on the gun but he keeps the nose aimed at the ground while she hops off the horse. She wipes her hands on her jeans, then holds out one to shake. Dean passes the gun to his left hand to shake hers on auto-pilot, though later he’ll marvel at the scarcity of this type of distinctly human gesture.

“I’m Jody Mills,” she said, and gestures at the house. “This is Kitsune.”

“Dean,” Dean says. “Winchester.”

Jody must be a beta. It seems ridiculous that anyone would bother with blockers anymore, but the only thing in Dean’s nose is the faint burn of ocean salt. “The travel ban is lifted,” Jody says. “If you can find fuel.”

“Come in,” Dean says. “Have a drink. We haven’t seen anyone else in a long time.”

Dean leads Jody up to the house, her horse following at a plod. “Is your mate here?” Jody says.

“Yeah,” Dean says. He’s never been a believer — but once he read that there are no atheists in foxholes, and that must be true because he’s never felt so goddamn blessed in his life, his mate safe at his side.

Jody doesn’t have a bite but smells of sorrow mixed with gritty determination. Dean likes her already.

The rest of Dean’s apocalypse family is waiting tersely on the porch. Jody nods hello and loops her horse’s reins around the railing.

“No more travel ban,” Dean says, then introduces Jody to the group.

They all sit in the living room, and Jody looks surprised when Zar pulls out a bottle of scotch. All the liquor stores Dean has seen, even as early as when they first arrived, are looted and empty, but Balthazar kept a huge supply of just about everything in his basement even before the war. In case of an impromptu orgy, he told them, and Cas’s eyes rolled so hard his whole head moved with it.

There’s a couple of fingers for all of them still sloshing in the bottle. Anna grimaces as she sips, but Jody drinks the same way Dean does, like she’s been doing it since birth.

“How do you know?” Cas asks Jody.

“Met some folks that just came in from the north. They weren’t detained at the roadblocks and were pretty convinced they had someone who was going to get them into Mexico.”

“They’ll get shot if they try that,” Dean says.

“And I told ‘em so. But sometimes desperate people can’t be saved.”

The good scotch is gone but Inias goes down to the basement and comes back with cheap whiskey. Over drinks, they all tell their stories: where they were when the first bomb dropped, how they ended up in Port A, the people they’ve lost. Inias’s partner — they’d been planning their mating ceremony — was murdered by regular people, not even soldiers or militia, just standard human depravity. Anna must’ve known, but Inias hadn’t told anyone else about it until now.

Jody used to have a daughter.

Not much more than a year ago, Dean’s friends were still filling each other’s homes for parties, playing stupid drinking games, for the most part still believing they were invincible.

They talk late enough that Jody stays the night on one of the couches. When Dean gets up in the morning, Jody and Cas are bent over a map at the kitchen table.

 

Jody has a couple of other horses, and just like with fishing, Cas takes to riding right away. Anna isn’t bad, either, and the two of them plus Jody head out in opposite directions several times a week, seeing who else they can find.

Dean and Cas have a door-slamming fight about it when Dean says he doesn’t like the idea of Cas out there alone. When Cas finally turns the lock to let Dean back in the bedroom they share, Dean says, “There are people out there who won’t care that you’re mated.”

Cas crosses his arms, a sure sign he about to dig in his heels and refuse to budge. “You don’t own me,” he says.

“Cas, come on, you know that’s not what I mean.”

“Anna’s an omega, too, and you don’t seem concerned about her.”

“It would be horrible if something happened to her, but she’s not my _mate_.”

Cas agrees to spend more time practicing with the gun, but refuses to stop riding out all together. He brings gifts back for Dean sometimes. A carton of cigarettes, paperback books, oranges for the house to share. One time he shows up with a dog trotting along next to the horse he rides. The dog is midnight-black, big and lanky, and just old enough to remember that people used to be the source of his meals.

Dean calls him Indy and now he has someone to take long walks with while Cas is away.

 

Cas has been gone for three days, and Dean is losing his mind. He’s ready to launch a one-man search party, if only he had any idea where to start, when he sees Cas stumbling towards the house on foot. Dean runs out to meet him — falls and scrapes his knee in his hurry — and launches himself on Cas as soon as he’s close enough, burying his face in Cas’s neck. “Fuck,” Dean whispers brokenly. “ _Cas_.”

Dean didn’t realize he was crying until he pulls back and Cas wipes the tears away from his cheeks. Cas is swaying on his feet, leaning heavily onto Dean, but he manages a weak smile. “I was rushing home,” he says. “Starship tripped and — I had to shoot him.”

“Jesus,” Dean says, kissing Cas’s forehead, and then his mouth, and then each of his cheeks, and then his mouth again. “I was so fucking scared. I love you. I love you so fucking much.”

Cas’s eyes desaturate, but slowly, and Dean has never seen him so weary that he’s not fully responding to his alpha’s affections. “I love you, too,” Cas says, and then, “The president is dead.”

“ _What_? How do you know?”

“A day’s ride inland, I met a group with a radio. And — there’s a ceasefire.”

Dean pulls Cas’s arm over his shoulders and helps him towards the house. “You’re about to collapse. How long have you been walking?”

“Since a couple hours after sunrise.”

“Do you have water? Have you eaten?”

“I ran out,” Cas says.

Everyone crowds around Cas when he and Dean come in the front door, but Dean shoves them away and puts Cas in their bed. He helps Cas out of his boots and dirty clothes, brings him water and food, holds him close. Dean can feel Cas’s heart pounding every time he kisses the mark on his neck.

“I was afraid,” Cas says after a long silence in the dark. “That I wouldn’t make it back to you.”

Dean shuts his eyes tight against burning tears. “Me too,” he says hoarsely.

“I didn’t want to tell you this,” Cas says, “but I didn’t just shoot the horse.”

Dean tenses, eyes darkening to blood red.

“You were right about there being alphas who wouldn’t care that I’m mated. Who don’t care that I’m — not receptive.”

Dean can’t breathe. “Did something happen?”

“No, I stopped them,” Cas says. “All that target practice paid off.”

Dean tightens his arms around Cas, cradling his face in one of his hands. “Just one of them?”

“Two. They’re both dead.”

Dean has a sudden, visceral memory of Cas cupping a spider in his hands to transport it from their living room to the outdoors when Dean had been ready to kill it. “Christ, I’m sorry, Cas.”

“I made it home to you. That’s all that matters.”

  


Jody takes in a teenager the same age as her daughter was, a sharp-tongued blonde who wipes the floor with all of them during candlelit poker games. She likes Cas a lot, and she’s a survivor, got a good head on her shoulders. When Cas has another heat, Claire stops by every day to ask after him.

Dean tries not to think about the people it’s impossible to communicate with, but Charlie visits his mind often. They were headed to Dorothy’s grandparents’ place in Colby, Kansas, but Dean will probably never know if they made it or not. He wishes he had pushed harder for them to come along to the gulf. Charlie was the best man at Dean and Cas’s quick and dirty mating ceremony.

Dean laughed when Charlie gave him and Cas a family scrapbook not long after the ceremony — _who actually prints pictures anymore, Charles?_ — but now Dean is just glad to have something to look at when he starts to forget faces of people he loves. Loved. And Cas is still right next to him, but Dean likes to look at the old pictures of them, too, when it was easy to laugh, a long time before their first kiss.

 

Donna Hanscum and company make the trek to Casa Novak, Winchester, and Osmond to set them up with a radio of their own. Dean nearly breaks his neck climbing around on the roof with the pizza delivery guy that joined up with Donna just after the lights went out, but they get an antenna installed in the end.

Messages pass up and down the grapevine, hopping from one enclave of survivors to another like a game of high-stakes telephone. Despite being someone Dean used to describe as intensely introverted, Cas is the one who spends the most time on the radio, sometimes late into the night. Dean misses him, but at least he doesn’t travel anymore.

 

“They’re closing the state border,” Cas says.

 

“Texas has declared itself a sovereign nation,” Cas says.

 

“The military’s on the move,” Cas says.

 

“The Allies are taking back the eastern seaboard,” Cas says.

 

“The refugee camps are still full, but people are starting to talk about heading home,” Cas says.

 

There’s no home left for them, but Dean misses their cheap little apartment that hardly ever got direct sunlight, Cas’s art prints that Dean hated hanging on the walls, their ugly vintage couch from a consignment shop. Dean misses Sam calling him an asshole. Dean misses his mom, the way she glows like a halo in all of his memories. Sometimes Dean misses his dad, even though he’d secretly been a little relieved when John died.

There’s warmth in Dean’s bed, though, the solid weight of his omega laying across his chest, an endlessly-growing Indy at their feet so Dean and Cas have to tuck their knees up to keep their legs from being crushed.

Cas and his siblings made peace without Dean realizing it was happening, though he definitely noticed the first morning Inias came out from Anna’s room instead of his own. The next time Anna’s cycle comes up, the house is considerably less tense, even though Dean can smell and hear her and Inias taking care of it together.

 

“It’s almost impossible to get any gas with the rationing, but the oil fields are producing again,” Cas says.

 

Donna’s pizza guy meets an alpha on a scavenging run, a tough Texas woman with a slow drawl, and before long Dean and Cas are visiting so Cas can bounce a baby on his hip. They never wanted kids of their own, but that doesn’t stop the nearly overwhelming instinct to nurture.

Dean and Cas talk sometimes about moving in to one of the other houses down the beach from Balthazar’s, but they don’t go through with it. Dean thought cramped quarters with people Cas used to love would be a certain kind of hell, but the world is lonely now, and they’re both reluctant to leave.

 

One morning Cas climbs into Dean’s lap before they even make it out of bed. It’s not that he never does this, but combined with the hot and hard way he kisses Dean, Dean’s a little suspicious.

“We’re not having sex,” Dean says.

Cas’s brow furrows, adorably, like it hadn’t occurred to him. “Of course we aren’t.”

“Just making sure you knew that.”

“I wanted to kiss you. Is that all right?”

Dean smiles, looks down at Cas’s mouth. “That’s always all right.”

Dean drops into a red-eyed haze as soon as his omega presses close again. He slides his hands under Cas’s shirt to grip his hips, moans into Cas’s kisses, feels consumed by the tidal wave of Cas’s love for him.

Cas bares his throat, and Dean kisses wetly down it towards marks his teeth left, whispering praise into his skin. Dean’s mouth fits over the shape of the mating bite, and he digs his teeth in again.

Cas’s hands jerk where they’re wrapped around Dean’s shoulders. “Shh, omega,” Dean murmurs.

Dean waits until Cas quiets and says “go ahead” before he bites the second time. Cas whimpers and curls his fingers in Dean’s hair to hold him against Cas’s neck. Sometimes the need to break skin buzzes in Dean’s brain until he gives in, but he doesn’t feel like he has to make a hard claim now, just a quiet need for possession that doesn’t take anything more than a bruise to sate.

Dean covers the mark in sweet kisses while Cas pants into his hair. Reaffirming their bond doesn’t shoot straight to Cas’s cock like it does to Dean’s, but Cas needs it, too.

“I love you,” Dean says.

Cas’s eyes are bright and smiling. “I love you, too.”

“Things are bad,” Dean says.

“They’re getting better.”

“Cas, let me finish. Things are bad, but it’s been you and me against the world,” Dean says. “And that’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

**Author's Note:**

> [reallyelegantsharkfish on tumblr](http://reallyelegantsharkfish.tumblr.com/)
> 
> [transformative works policy](http://reallyelegantsharkfish.tumblr.com/post/167716491355/transformative-works-policy)
> 
> _we can live beside the ocean_  
>  _leave the fire behind_  
>  _swim out past the breakers_  
>  _watch the world die_
> 
> from ["santa monica" by everclear](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MW6E_TNgCsY)


End file.
